CHAPTER IX 



PERHAPS it will be as well for me to hark back here 

 and make some extracts from my last year's whaling 

 log and sketch-books, for who knows when this St 

 Ebba will fall in with whales ; in this way the reader will 

 the sooner be made acquainted with the procedure in 

 "Modern Whaling." 



The extracts that follow have appeared in magazines in 

 The Nineteenth Century, The Scottish Field, andinChambers's 

 Magazine, and Badminton, but possibly the reader may not 

 have seen them ; and I am sure that the illustrations have 

 not yet been submitted to the criticism of the general 

 public. 



The first begins one evening in June a year or two ago, 

 when we were fishing sea-trout in the Voe at Lochend, beside 

 our whaling station, putting in the time till our whaler came 

 in from the outer sea. 



On the evening of the second day of waiting a fair-haired, 

 rosy-cheeked boy with great grey eyes and a ragged red 

 waistcoat came down from the hill bare-footed and breath- 

 less, and said : " She is there ! " and went off in astonish- 

 ment at the unfamiliar silver. Then we got our bag down 

 to the shore and waited for the smoke above the headland 

 which would tell us that our little steam-whaler had been into 

 the Colla Firth station and had left the last captured whale 

 there, had taken coal on board, and was coming out again 

 for the high seas. 



Henriksen has heard of our arrival and, as she swings into 

 the bay in front of Haldane's house down comes her pram, 

 and two Norsemen come off in it and take the writer on 

 board. 



Ah ! it is good to feel again the rolling deck, on " the road 

 to freedom and to peace," to the open sea and big hunting, 



68 



